{"id":1437110,"date":"2023-11-05T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1437110"},"modified":"2023-11-05T13:40:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-05T18:40:00","slug":"queers-for-palestine-identity-politics-at-its-most-absurd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/queers-for-palestine-identity-politics-at-its-most-absurd\/1437110\/","title":{"rendered":"Queers For Palestine: Identity Politics At Its Most Absurd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queers For Palestine: Identity Politics At Its Most Absurd<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Armin Navabi via Quillette.com,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

On the morning of 7 October 2023, the militant Palestinian group Hamas orchestrated a\u00a0multi-pronged assault<\/a>\u00a0against Israel from the Gaza Strip. Their fighters breached the heavily fortified border and murdered\u00a0more than 1,400<\/a>\u00a0Israeli civilians, including young children. Here in the West, the political discourse surrounding these brutal events and the war that has come in their wake has been coloured by a misguided transposition of Western identity politics onto the Middle East, which collapses all nuance and reduces a complex situation into a simple binary of oppressor versus oppressed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leftists in English-speaking nations tend to see Palestinians (including Hamas) as an oppressed, brown victim class, whose freedom-fighting \u201cresistance\u201d against their oppressive, white, US-backed colonizers in Israel is a righteous cause with which to stand in solidarity. This facile view of the long-standing conflict in the Middle East leads to confused and contradictory thinking, as seen in the incoherent slogan (and now meme) \u201cQueers for Palestine<\/a>,\u201d emblazoned on banners\u00a0brandished<\/a>\u00a0at anti-Israel rallies.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cQueers for Palestine\u201d attempts to meld LGBT advocacy with Palestinian liberation, a juxtaposition that has precipitated a whirlwind of\u00a0criticism<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0ridicule<\/a>, since LGBT rights scarcely exist within the Muslim world; and the Palestinian territories are no exception.<\/strong> The slogan has been widely satirized. Variations like \u201cChickens for KFC<\/a>\u201d and \u201cBlacks for the KKK<\/a>\u201d highlight its proponents\u2019 basic lack of awareness of just how incompatible the values of the Western left are with those of the\u00a0Islamic right<\/a>\u00a0they so readily champion.<\/p>\n

The reality of the situation could not be starker.<\/p>\n

Though there is room for improvement in Israeli attitudes towards these issues, Israel is at the\u00a0forefront<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0LGBT rights<\/a>\u00a0in the Middle East.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Israel, LGBT people are visible members of society with\u00a0legal protections<\/a>\u00a0and civil rights, and are accepted by a\u00a0plurality<\/a>\u00a0of its citizens.<\/p>\n

Palestine is quite a different story.<\/strong> A 2021 report on LGBT acceptance by\u00a0UCLA\u2019s Williams Institute<\/a>\u00a0rated Israel 44th out of the 175 countries\/territories they examined. Palestine came in at number 130, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.\u00a0Georgetown University<\/a>\u00a0likewise placed Palestine 160th out of 170 countries on their women\u2019s peace and security index, in\u00a0company<\/a>\u00a0with most of the countries in that region.\u00a0Amnesty International\u2019s<\/a>\u00a02020 report on human rights highlights the fact that, in Gaza, male same-sex relationships are punishable by up to 10 years\u2019 imprisonment and points out the conspicuous absence of legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment. This lack of civil rights has led hundreds of gay and bisexual Palestinians to\u00a0flee<\/a>\u00a0to Israel to\u00a0escape<\/a>\u00a0persecution<\/a>. One such refugee,\u00a0Ahmad Abu Marhia<\/a>, a 25-year-old gay Palestinian man, was living under asylum in Israel when, in 2022, he was kidnapped and\u00a0beheaded<\/a>\u00a0in the West Bank city of Hebron. His murderers uploaded footage of the killing to social media.<\/p>\n

Every time these disparities are mentioned, critics are quick to lob accusations of \u201cpinkwashing\u201d\u2014a concept\u00a0invented<\/a>\u00a0to frame any discussion of Israel\u2019s progressive stance on LGBT issues as a distraction from their mistreatment of Palestinians. But the fact remains that these \u201cQueers for Palestine\u201d could march in Pride parades in Israel if they wanted to. In Palestine, they\u2019d be killed.<\/p>\n

Another disconcerting element of \u201cQueers for Palestine\u201d is that the slogan popped up in prominent left-wing anti-Israel\/pro-Palestine rallies in the immediate aftermath of Hamas\u2019s terrorist attacks, before Israel had even had the chance to respond.<\/strong> There is no way to interpret this slogan and the surrounding leftist fervor except as a signal of support not merely for Palestine, but specifically for Hamas, a jihadist movement with the explicit aim of\u00a0eradicating<\/a>\u00a0the state of Israel. It\u2019s imperative to understand that Hamas, as detailed in its 1988 Covenant, is propelled by a fundamentalist Islamist ideology whose goal is not only to\u00a0eliminate all Jews<\/a>\u00a0but to conquer the world\u2014just like ISIS. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar has\u00a0stated on record<\/a>, \u201cThe entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Western support for Hamas, under the guise of support for Palestinian liberation, betrays an ignorance of the deep-seated radical Islamist ethos driving that organization, which, if left unchecked, would jeopardize the very freedoms cherished by LGBT people across the developed world. Anyone who doubts this should try being gay, bi, or trans in most of the Middle East and North Africa\u2019s (MENA) Muslim-majority countries. Almost all these nations have laws that criminalize both homosexuality and\u00a0transsexuality<\/a>, some of which carry the\u00a0death penalty<\/a>. Human Rights Watch\u2019s report “Everyone Wants Me Dead<\/a>” succinctly encapsulates in its title alone the perilous environment faced by LGBT individuals in these regions.<\/p>\n

Many on the Western left, including the LGBT left, have become enamored with\u00a0Critical Social Justice<\/a>, through whose warped lens they perceive all of humanity as fitting into two classes: oppressors and oppressed. <\/strong>Armed with this simplistic, binary worldview, leftists gravitate toward perceived liberation movements for other so-called oppressed groups. This narrow prism obscures the\u00a0universalist ideology of Islamism<\/a>\u00a0espoused by groups like Hamas, which under a facade of anti-imperialist rhetoric, harbors a brutal dogma that is antithetical to the liberties and rights championed by LGBT activists. No matter how much they complain about \u201cpinkwashing,\u201d they can\u2019t conceal the absurd irony of this situation, in which folks who believe in LGBT liberation are cheerleading\u00a0ideological movements<\/a>\u00a0from which they would flee as refugees were they to live under such regimes.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the Palestinian people have endured more than their fair share of suffering, and it\u2019s easy to see how the Palestinian resistance narrative can carry the allure of righteous rebellion, especially for those factions of the hard left that aspire to dismantle liberal society. <\/strong>The vicarious thrill of romanticized revolution leads some to go far beyond simply advocating for the Palestinian people to express solidarity with Hamas, ignoring the jihadist ideology at the core of that organization.<\/p>\n

The followers of this ideology are oppressing LGBT Palestinians at this very moment.<\/strong> Given half a chance, they would oppress the very leftists now voicing support for the Palestinian cause. And, indeed, this has happened before.<\/p>\n

The aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran is a harrowing tale. Leftists were\u00a0tortured and executed<\/a>\u00a0en masse<\/em>\u00a0by the very Islamic regime they supported for the sake of their anti-imperialist goals; many Iranians who aligned with\u00a0leftist organizations<\/a>\u00a0supported the revolution only to find themselves\u00a0persecuted<\/a>\u00a0by Islamists they helped put in power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Immediately following the revolution, the new regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini began systematically oppressing LGBT people and publicly executing them\u00a0by the thousands<\/a>. These atrocities were justified as a means of \u201celiminating corruption\u201d and preventing the \u201ccontamination\u201d of society. Between 4,000 and 6,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual people\u00a0have been executed<\/a>\u00a0since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran\u2019s legal system, rooted in Islamic law, criminalizes consensual sexual relations between same-sex individuals, with penalties ranging from lashes to death. Iranian law does not distinguish between\u00a0consensual and non-consensual<\/a>\u00a0same-sex intercourse; allowing authorities to prosecute both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault.<\/p>\n

Images of gay and bi men\u00a0hanged from cranes<\/a>\u00a0so that they slowly suffocate to death serve as grim reminders for anyone interested in human rights: align with Islamic fundamentalists at your peril.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon of \u201cQueers for Palestine,\u201d and the realities it glosses over, underscore the need for a more informed and discerning discourse\u2014a discourse that transcends catchy slogans and moral binaries and delves into the complex, often discordant ideologies at play in the Israel-Palestine conflict. <\/strong>That way, we can advocate for a better future without bolstering forces antithetical to liberal values, and without betraying LGBT people by undermining their very rights and freedoms. We can\u2019t do that if we overwrite the complicated dynamics of a 75-year foreign conflict with our own provincial identity politics.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

The original version of this piece appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Queer Majority, a publication that champions the sexual rights and freedoms of consenting adults, while eschewing identity politics and retaining a firm commitment to liberal values. You can find more articles from that unique perspective\u00a0here<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 11\/05\/2023 – 08:40<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/queers-palestine-identity-politics-its-most-absurd<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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